Wi-Fried Trees???

I always thought that going paperless would save trees, but it turns out that our emails may actually be killing trees at an alarming rate. A new study (that I really didn't want to hear about because it is way too depressing) indicates that radiation from Wi-Fi networks may be damaging trees. Indeed, the research ordered by a city in Holland showed that trees that were planted in close proximity to a wireless router suffered from damaged bark and dying leaves.

The study, conducted by Wageningen University, investigated findings that trees in areas with high Wi-Fi activity (urban areas, especially) were suffering from symptoms that couldn't be tied to typical bacterial or viral causes. The symptoms included bleeding (!), fissures in the bark, the death of parts of leaves, and abnormal growth. To test the hypothesis that the mystery illness was caused by radiation poisoning the reasearches exposed 20 ash trees to Wi-Fi signals for three months. Sure enough, the ash trees exposed to Wi-Fi signals, showed telltale signs of radiation signals including a "lead-like shine" which indicated the oncoming death of those leaves. Researchers and environmentalists are eager to get to the bottom of the study, because in the Netherlands 70 percent of urban trees are suffering from radiation poisoning, up from only 10 percent five years ago. You can read more at the U.K. Daily Mail, here.